[Cyanogen CEO] McMaster revealed that Cyanogen is working with Microsoft to deeply integrate Cortana into the next version of Cyanogen OS. This is key to catapulting Cyanogen into the mass market, he asserts […].

Cyanogen says it’s partnering with Microsoft to integrate the software giant’s consumer apps and services into the Cyanogen OS. Bing, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, and Microsoft Office will all be bundled later this year. As part of the partnership, Microsoft has committed to creating “native integrations” on Cyanogen OS.

This *is* certainly curious. What are the odds that someone running Cyanogen is interested in, say, OneNote? Or Outlook? Low. But at a higher level, Cyanogen is counting on this deal to improve their credibility and visibility. Both would differentiate them from other forked Android competitors. For Microsoft, the amount of extra R&D is probably small, since it’s already doing this for Android. So it’s a low-risk experiment.